ANTHROPOLOGY. 
413 
After birth, the Masai baby (who is generally quite 
yellow when first born), is carried in a roll of leather 
attached to its mother’s shoulders. Female infants 
are considered a disappointmennt, and are often termed 
contemptuously 64 pans,” or “ empty, hollow vessels ” 
(E-modi). The more boys a wife bears, the more she 
is esteemed. Up to the age of three both sexes alike 
are term “ Eh-gera ” or “ children ”—a word meaning 
6C the sheep sort,” or C£ the little sheep,” Then the 
males are distinguished as “ En-aiok ” (sing. En-aion), 
and later as ££ Ei-aiok,” while the girls continue to be 
called Eh-gera until they attain puberty, when they 
are known as En-doye (sing. En-dito). Young men 
after circumcision, when they leave the family home 
and consort with the warriors, are called cc El-barnodi,” 
from the roots barn, to shave, and odi, or godi, a 
calabash. It means that they shave or scrape the 
milk-calabashes (which are never cleaned with water, 
but by scraping and rubbing with wood-ashes) for the 
young warriors, and make themselves otherwise gene¬ 
rally useful. At about the age of seventeen they 
become fighting-men, and join the army, which in¬ 
cludes practically the entire manhood of the nation 
between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four. The 
young men are known as El-moran. Their dress is 
picturesque but scanty. In ordinary, every-day life 
they wear nothing, and walk about in all their splendid, 
shameless nudity; or if they wish to make a little 
toilet, or are about to leave the camp, they sling a 
truduntur, ubi qmim coaluerunt, fit moile et rotundum tuber glandi 
subjectum, ita ut panllo longius conspiciente videtur penis dnplicem 
terminuni habere. Hoc membrum apud Masaios enorme est: quod 
celare turpe existimatur, honestum expromere, atque etiam ostentare. 
Apnd feminas clitoris ante matrimonium abscind itar quo facilius fiat 
eonceptio. 
